May 27, 2012

The New Deadwardians # 2 - Dan Abnett & I.N.J. Culbard

“Somehow, someone has managed to murder that which was not alive”. Indeed, as we saw on the first issue, a vampire has been murdered. Chief Inspector George Suttle must find an answer to the greatest enigma he’s come across with in his career as an investigator: how can a vampire be dead if there are no stakes in the heart, if the head hasn’t been removed and if there hasn’t been any exposure to daylight? Nobody knows the answer, but everyone is deeply concerned about this case.

This isn’t the Edwardian England you’ve read about in history books. London had almost crumbled under the weight of the living dead, mindless creatures who seek only to devour the living. These ‘restless’, however, are powerless before the ‘young’, the vampiric aristocracy that rules the British Empire. For noble men and women, taking the ‘cure’ is synonym of turning into a bloodsucking creature of the night.

“Lamella” is a peculiar concept coined by Lacan. A lamella is indivisible, indestructible and immortal –id est, undead in the sense this term has in horror fiction, exemplifying the obscene immortality of the "living dead" which can be shot at, stabbed or burned and will still clumsily go on. In Lacan’s own words, lamella does not exist, it insists.

There is a reason why the zombie subgenre is a worldwide success, and it’s because it’s deeply rooted in psychoanalytic terms that, consciously or unconsciously, appeal to us. Abnett, however, dares to take this even further, as he combines the legacy of Bram Stoker with the offspring of George A. Romero.

According to Freud, the death drive could be associated with the so-called "compulsion-to-repeat," an uncanny urge to repeat painful past experiences. It happens to us when we can’t overcome certain traumas, but it’s also a useful way of describing the behavior of the living dead in horror films, because the constant hunger is indeed a compulsory drive. The restless that surround London represent this repetition, this obscene immortality whereas the vampire represent the last bastion of human rationality and the sublime immortality, the beauty of never growing old, of ageless bodies.

Sutton starts investigating the murder, and without spoiling the surprises of this issue, I can say he finds out that something very dark is going on in England’s capital city. But how could it be other way if you have vampires and zombies coexisting in the same place?

The artist of the miniseries is I.N.J. Culbard, a name I wasn’t familiar with, but I think the stylistic tone of the series must come from him. The covers are like homages to advertisement placards from that era, and the interior pages share a few elements with the poster art, an artistic movement ushered in by the likes of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret and Théophile Steinlen. Here, hatching techniques or gray tones give way to contrast and bright colors. _______________________________________

What is Lacan? Interesting analysis, I want to add that, in the tradition of murder mysteries, this murder mystery talks to social class structures, what with the murder of an upper class "young" that must be solved quickly before it leaks to the public.

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Comic books are my passion. They are as precious to me as the oxygen I breathe, and perhaps even more. The 9th art has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. And through the years, this passion kept on increasing, thus turning me into an active participant. I started as a reader and later on I became a full-fledged writer and artist. Indeed I’ve found the perfect way to have twice as much pleasure when it comes to comics: I can either read them or write and draw them. And I absolutely love doing both!